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About Presidential Nominations | Presidential Nominations Search Help
Nomination Records that are Split into Parts
About Presidential Nominations
The president is responsible for nominating individuals to a wide variety of civilian, judicial and military positions. The Senate must confirm nominations. The Constitution mandates this process for ambassadors, cabinet members and Supreme Court justices. Other laws require that the Senate also confirm federal judges and certain other military and civilian appointees. The White House sends nominations to the Senate in paper form, and the executive clerk of the Senate posts the information in a database.
Each nomination is identified by the prefix PN (Presidential Nomination) and followed by a sequence number (e.g., PN1). Since the numbering begins anew with each Congress, the number of that Congress is appended to the nomination number, e.g., PN1-107, PN1-105.
Each PN may contain one or more individual nominations. Military nominations, for instance, often contain multiple names. Thus, PN1680-107 presents 43 individual names for appointment to the rank of Captain in the Naval Reserve. Multi-name PNs may go through the confirmation process as a group, but they could be split into one or more parts. The split parts are identified with a two-digit suffix. For instance, PN1015-107 was split into two parts, identified as PN1015-01-107 and PN1015-02-107. The record for the original nomination provides little information; it is necessary to search for the split records. View a more detailed description of split records.
Update Frequency
New information is added to the database once a day and is available early the next morning. Corrections in older Congresses are added weekly and are ready for searching on Monday mornings.
Activity Before Nomination Received by Senate
Hearings, debates and other activity occurring before the Senate receives the official nomination are not tracked in the nominations database. For example, the Senate received the nomination for Attorney General John Ashcroft on January 29, 2001, and that is the beginning date of the record in the nominations database. Hearings held the month before the Senate received the official nomination are not tracked in the nominations database.
Recess appointments also occur before the Senate officially receives the nomination. The president has 40 days from the date a recess appointment is announced to send the papers to the Senate. Once the Senate receives them, a new nomination is created in the nominations database.
Not all recess appointments are tracked in the nominations database. Most recess appointees have already been nominated, so if the Senate confirms the original nomination before the president sends the recess appointment to the Senate, the president does not send the recess appointment papers. For example, JoAnn Johnson was nominated in November 2001 (PN1230). A White House press release reports that the president signed a recess appointment for JoAnn Johnson in late January 2002. The Senate confirmed PN1230 before the 40-day period ended and the president did not send her recess appointment to the Senate, so there is no record of it in the nominations database.
For those recess appointments that are sent to the Senate, there will normally be two nominations. The earlier one will have no mention of a recess appointment to indicate that the nominee was appointed during the last recess of the Senate. The second one contains a note about the recess appointment. An example is the nomination of Rene Acosta in the 107th Congress (PN1114), to be a member of the National Labor Relations Board, received in the Senate October 9, 2001. He was then given a recess appointment during the recess of the Senate from December 20, 2001, through January 23, 2002, and the Senate received the recess appointment nomination on February 28, 2002 (PN1469). PN1114 does not identify the recess appointment. Instead the recess appointment is noted in the newer nomination record, PN1469, albeit much later in time than the activity itself.
Timely and comprehensive identification of recess appointments have to be made via other sources than the nominations database, such as a White House press releases. Consult these and other sources such as the Congressional Record and newspapers for nominations-related activities that occur outside the official receipt of nominations in the Senate and the conclusion of the confirmation process.
Presidential Nominations Search Help
Search By Type of Nomination
Nominations are categorized as either:
- Civilian
- Military, Foreign Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Public Health
By default, both types are selected. Either may be un-selected.
Search by Congress
The default Congress is the current Congress. To select another Congress, highlight it in the select box. To add one or more Congresses, hold the CTRL key on the keyboard while selecting the Congresses. To select all Congresses at once, select ALL.
To search all the nominations in the current Congress, simply click Search. To search all nominations in another Congress, click on the Congress number, then click the Search button.
Search by Word/Phrase/Name
Select “Word/Phrase” from the drop-down menu to conduct a Word/Phrase search. All parts of the nominations records are searchable: number, name of nominee and of predecessor, position, organization to which nomination was made and legislative actions.
A list of stopwords is available. Drop hyphens that might be part of a phrase.
Automatic singular/plural radio buttons determine whether words will be searched exactly as typed or with singular and plural word endings. Or, use an asterisk (*) to control (stem) word endings. For example:
finance* searches for finance financed finances
financ* searches for finance financed finances financial
financier financing
Be careful no to stem too far, for example:
ag* searches for age, aged, aging, agent, agency, agencies, agenda, agendas, aggregate, aggregated, aggression, aggrieved, agostini, aggravating, agreed, agriculture and much more.
Search by Presidential Nomination (PN) Number
Enter one PN number at a time. For example: pn1. If a nomination has been split into parts, all parts will be found. To find only a specific part, include the part number. For example: pn1-01. View more information about split records.
Search by Legislative Actions
There are 15 major stages of legislative action on presidential nominations. The search result of the selection of any one returns results for that action and any succeeding actions.
Search by Committee
Select one or more committees to find all nominations referred to those committees.
Search by State of Nominee
This function searches for civilian and Foreign Service records only.
Search by Date of Nomination
Date indicates the date the nomination was received in the Senate.
Search Presidential Nominations
Displaying Results
Brief Displays
When more than one nomination record is returned by a search, all will be returned in a brief display, which may include: nomination number, name of nominee, position to which nominated, organization to which nominated, vice (indicates predecessor), predecessor's name and reason for departure (i.e., retired or term expired). The brief display of nominations with more than one name includes a count of names on the list, as well as the names of the first and last person on the list. Brief displays also include the date the nomination was received by the Senate and the latest major legislative action.
By default, records are sorted in reverse order by nomination number. Results can also be sorted by chronological order of nomination or latest legislative action.
Full Displays
To see the full display of a nomination record, including legislative actions and all the names in a nomination, click on the nomination number from the brief display. Searches that find only one item will immediately display all available information for that nomination.